Nixa High School’s robotics team, the Screamin’ Eagles, took its robot to compete at Kansas City on Jan. 10. Every year, the competition changes, and students must design a new robot fit to complete the set tasks. It is one of the aspects of the Department of War’s STEM initiative. 

   “In a competition, what’s being looked for is that the end result reflects students’ capabilities. 

It’s all student-centered,” Robotics instructor and Drone Team coach Robert Hodapp said. “ I train them to be able to work everything on their own, and I provide an insight into, you know, if it’s a robot that’s  structurally sound, or whether it needs some extra help. But it’s supposed to be 99 percent student-centered.”

   The Robotics team meets on Wednesdays and Thursdays after school. There, the students have competition practices in order to continue building the program. They also have scrimmages testing their robot, called Clanker, after its “Star Wars” droid relatives.

   “I’m enjoying the fact that I have a group that I can work with and help create this working robot that we can actually compete with and then possibly make it to finals,” freshman Fionna Hodapp said.

   Out of the 20 students in the Robotics class eighth hour, five to six of them are regular competitors.

   “Locally, there’s not a lot going on,” Robert Hodapp said. “But I like the fact that we get a lot of support from the Army … they provide us [with] all of our equipment. It’s good to see that these kids are learning a skill that they can use outside of the classroom … and hopefully maybe in a career down the road. So that’s important to us.”

   Besides lessons on coding and basic builds, the Robotics team has no instructions on how to design or build the robot. The biggest challenge for them is having to meet a set standard.

    “It takes a lot to design and actually come up with a reliable robot that’s going to be able to do all these tasks in a very short amount of time,” Robert Hodapp said. “So you’ve got to have speed, you’ve got to have reliability, you’ve got to have accuracy in your coding.”

   This year, the robot’s task is to take the balls from the vertical tunnels and place them into three other horizontal tunnels. They vary in height, and it is limited to an 18-inch area. Qualifiers are then set up by the Robots Education and Competition Foundation (RECF,) which controls how the competitions are set up.

   “So if there’s 40 teams competing, they want to have no less than four qualifying matches,” Robert Hodapp said. “Usually we get around six, though. So you’ll be allianced for each qualifier. There’ll be four robots on the field. Two will be blue and two will be red. And then the two that are red, they alliance together, and together they are going to try to get … more points than the other alliances so there’s give and take.”

   The top eight teams that win this qualifier get to choose who their alliance for the rest of the competition will be. In total, 16 teams will be competing. 

   “It’s kind of like, say, with basketball tournaments, you have the seeds, and each seed gets to choose who they want to alliance with,” Robert Hodapp said. “So if the … first seed says, ‘All right, I want the best advantage I can get, I’m going to seed with the second seed,’ and then they seed together, so now they’re in alliance.”

   Based on this seed, the 16 teams will be placed in a bracketing system. The final competition is between four teams. 

   “[It’s] depending on the level,” Robert Hodapp said. “At the local levels, it’s just a winner takes all”

   He said that to design a functioning robot, able to complete the tasks, over 70 hours may be required. Some teams from other schools may work all summer long to compete in the early events.

   “It’s kind of fun watching them to actually be able to do that because they can come up with some pretty funny things,” Robert Hodapp said. “Then they realize, ‘Oh, this may not work as well as it should,’ so then they have to go back and redesign it again, and figure out what they need to change to make it function right.”

   To compete, the team will first register to the RECF. The RECF is a part of VEX Robotics.

   “We will go in there with our teams and … we find local events in Missouri – you can compete wherever you want it just [depends on] how much traveling you want to do,” Hodapp said. “Then, we go in there and we register all of our teams for that particular date, we travel to those dates … they have to get their robots inspected and they use that device … They [VEX] want to make sure that you are using appropriate coding platforms.”

   While the competitions are usually held in Dallas, the location is under construction. As a result, this year’s contest will be held in St. Louis this year.

   “There’s only like five places in the entire United States big enough because VEX, who we compete with, they’re actually in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the largest ever robotics competition in the world,” Robert Hodapp said. “There’s the elementary level, and there’s the middle school level. Then, there’s the high school level, and then there’s the college level. So this event takes place over like 10 days, because each of the levels come in and do their competitions … move out, and the next one comes in.”

   The Robotics team prepares the students to transition to competitions when in college. Cates said that he joined the Robotics team because he was looking for something to do, and because he wanted to make friends. He recommends it to anyone with time.

   “I like the fact that it involves a lot of STEM and that kids can work together,” Robert Hodapp said. “When they go to these competitions, they get to know some of the people from around the area.”